WASHINGTON — Americans are not as sleep-deprived as they think they are, and in fact they appear to be getting more Z’s these days than they got a few years ago, according to an independent analysis of government statistics.
“Many Americans work too much, but most do not seem to be cutting corners on their sleep to do so,” said John Robinson, a sociologist at the University of Maryland, who led the analysis with colleague Steven Martin.
Their report, “Not So Deprived: Sleep in America, 1965-2005,” scheduled for release by the university today, finds that Americans on average got 59 hours of sleep per week in 2005, the latest year for which precise statistics are available. That is three hours more than in 2000.
The analysis draws upon detailed “time-use” data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau for the Department of Labor Statistics. In that approach, individuals must account for every minute of the previous day.
“This gives us a much better picture of where the time goes than when people just make an estimate,” Robinson said.
The primary factor affecting the amount of sleep a person gets is whether or not they are employed, the new analysis shows. Apparent differences among men and women and people of varying ages and races effectively disappear when individuals’ employment status is taken into account.
“Older people sleep more, but that’s because they tend to be unemployed,” Robinson said. “If you control for those differences, the differences in sleep disappear too.”
Most surprising are the hints that sleep time may actually be increasing after many decades of virtually no change.
The new data show Americans getting an average of 8.5 hours per night in 2005, compared with eight hours in 2000. Most of the extra minutes of weekly sleep are coming on Saturday nights — 9.5 hours of which were spent slumbering in 2005 compared with 8.8 hours in 2000. Friday-night slumber grew to 8.9 hours from 8.5, and workweek sleep grew to 8.2 hours from 7.8.
